I’ve always wondered what it’s like to live in Cornwall. All that beauty. All those pasties. Sean Pertwee in a wetsuit. Poldark. Cream teas. It’s very far away from my house, sure, but it’s more tranquil than a thousand Terrence Malick cornfields, and a perfect place to get away from it all. Unless, of course, you’re a crab, in which case your life is just a perpetual, grinding quest to avoid Rick Stein.

But the county’s major export, apart from tin, fine ales and the eyepatch, has been some of the most spectacular cinescapes to have ever graced the big screen. The Wreck Of The S.S. Paris, a 1899 short with a whiff of silent-era Bayhem (“Paris! Wrecked! Again!”), was followed by Alex Korda’s The Thief Of Baghdad, filmed on The Lizard’s sea-sharpened rocks. Hitch came here in 1939 for Jamaica Inn. There’s been Blue Juice. Sense & Sensibility. Th...

As you might have seen in the current Empire, I was invited by Universal last month to the red-carpet opening of the impressive new Transformers ride at their Orlando, Florida resort. There were jet planes, people in crazy stilt suits (or if you prefer for that to stay behind the curtain it was the real Bumblebee and Optimus!), “General” Glenn Morshower, explosions, and Steven Spielberg. Plus, of course, the ride itself: an exhilarating hurl around – and occasionally above – New York in new Autobot Evac, aggressively pursued by Decepticons in pursuit of a bit of Allspark.

A few technological upgrades aside, it’s essentially the same ride that Empire’s Ali Plumb crushed in Hollywood a year ago, so for loads more details, pay a visit to Ali’s own report here. From my trip though, I thought I’d share the transcript of this fun audience with Peter Cullen and Fr...

A few weeks I was over in Northern Ireland and went to see the Game Of Thrones exhibition at Titanic Belfast. This location is not to be confused with the Titanic, which was built in Belfast but now lies under the north Atlantic, nor Titanic Studios where Game Of Thrones has its base, although that's visible from the gallery. The Titanic centre is the flagship (no pun intended) of efforts by Northern Ireland Tourism to get people to visit the province, and Game Of Thrones and its temporary exhibition is now a part of its success. It got me thinking about the way we express fandom now and the way our relationship to our favourite shows and films is changing....

It is, by now, a truism that China is hugely important for Hollywood blockbusters. It’s currently the second-biggest single film market in the world; by the end of the decade it’s expected to be number one. The Chinese authorities only permit 34 foreign (mostly American) films to hit their screens each year – but those 34 get access to the country’s 1.344 billion people and take about 60% of a box-office worth £1.7bn last year. If you include sufficient Chinese elements in your film to be considered a “co-production”, you can take home 43% of the gross instead of the otherwise-typical 25%. In these straitened times, it’s no wonder that studios are shooting China-specific scenes and sub-plots (Iron Man 3’s Dr Wu had much more screentime in the Chinese cut), or that filmmakers are looking to include Chinese elements in their stories (Joss Whedon told EW in reference to Avengers 2 that, “China is on my radar. It can't not be at this point.”)...

As I careen rapidly closer to a solid cement wall, I find myself counting the number of times I’ve genuinely thought I might die. As it turns out, the vast majority of these have been in the past hour and a half thanks to the guys at Universal and Fast & Furious 6. As a car nut, when Empire was asked if one of our team would like to spend a morning burning the tyres off an Alfa Romeo for the upcoming ‘drive or die’ action movie, I boldly (or stupidly) assured everyone that, ‘I got this’. I had grand visions of learning how to drift round corners at 100mph and weave between oncoming buses, cabs and unsuspecting pedestrians, probably in LA, Tokyo or Miami. But nope. Instead I was packed off to Bedford. Not as glamorous, perhaps, but as it turns out its gusty plains are perfect for advanced driving lessons, so I headed north to put my limited skills to the ultimate test. Would I be fast? Would I be furious? Right now I’d settle for ‘swift’ and ...

The movie Once is a musical so subtle that most people don’t even realise it is a musical in the first place. The indie feel, low-key guitar songs and musician characters mean that it’s easy to miss the way characters unfailingly sing their feelings, or the miraculous ability they all have to pick up one another’s songs (which, let’s face it, talented musicians can actually do to a greater or lesser extent, so it only seems miraculous to the rest of us). All of that makes it a non-obvious choice for a stage adaptation – but the further non-obvious choices made in staging that adaptation make this a show that’s as delightfully low-key as the film was. Despite the fact that this is a Broadway smash transferred to the West End, it could hardly be further from the Lloyd Webber / Cameron Mackintosh extravaganza we’re accustomed to seeing.

For one thing, this is a musical with only one set – an Irish pub, its walls lined with mirrors hung haphazardly at var...

There’s a moment in Iron Man where Tony does this thing with his hands. It’s like a double finger click with his right hand that slaps into the palm of his left hand, making a sound like “Clicketty-click” in the process. It’s the kind of thing everyone’s favourite billionaire playboy philanthropist does when he’s walking, or thinking, or just being a bit cool. “Throw a little hot rod red in there…” Clicketty-click.

There’s another moment in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where the semi-professional fourth wall breaker is in the bathroom of posh restaurant Chez Quis, washing his hands and talking to no one in particular. Before he leaves, he picks up a mint from a bowl. “Mint”, he says, popping into his mouth. That’s it. “Mint.”

“From Whoopi all the way down to Ron Jeremy, it’s an honour that everyone else said no,” grinned a visibly nervy Seth MacFarlane at Oscars zero hour. A few minutes later you could sense people backstage fumbling for Jeremy’s number, hoping that the man could free himself from whatever torrid triste he was engaged in at the time to save the day as the Family Guy guy dropped clunker after clunker on the Oscars.

First there was a sur-le-nez remark about Jean Dujardin’s post-Oscars career lull that was undercut hilariously by the man himself about, what, nine months ago on Funny Or Die. If that seemed a little cheap, the riff on Daniel Day-Lewis’ in-character methods on Lincoln (“If you'd seen Don Cheadle on set, would you have had to free him?”, he asked the perplexed Brit) and a sock puppet version of Flight that culminated in him delibe...

Held in the vast Olympia hall in west London, Toy Fair is a giddifying jamboree that brings manufacturers and retailers together amid a vast array of Scalextric, Smurfettes and snoozing Furbys. It’s also – ssshhh! – a secret trove of plot points and spoilers for the big superhero releases of the year ahead. Last January, the nice people at Hasbro gave us a first peek at their new Hulk, revealing Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk clobber a good five months before The Avengers assembled, while LEGO showed off ‘Loki’s Cosmic Cube Escape’, in which a tiny god of mischief and an equally tiny, mind-controlled Hawkeye made off with the tesseract in a 4x4. You know, a bit like in the film.

Needless to say, we were back for Toy Fair 2013 this week, hoping to glean more brick-based hints from LEGO’s Iron Man 3...

As part of the Amazing Spider-Man New York press trip, I got the chance to see the Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark musical on Broadway. If you were to ask me for a one-word review of the Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark musical on Broadway, the one word I would give you is ‘bonkers’. On the better side of bonkers, mind, but still – ahem – completely off the wall.

Chances are, you’ll have already heard about its initial technical glitches, huge running costs and critical mauling. Maybe you’ll know it as “that U2 Spider-Man musical where those stuntmen were injured” or possibly as “the Broadway show with the weirdest name of all time”, but now that the dust has settled, the script has been rewritten, certain songs excised and nuts-on-the-wire rigging firmly tightened, this felt like the right time to appreciate Marvel’s foray i...